


花外流莺

by poundingsound (bluedreaming)



Category: EXID (Band), Miss A, VIXX
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/F, F/M, Infidelity, M/M, Secret Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-19
Updated: 2016-12-19
Packaged: 2018-09-09 18:17:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,491
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8906914
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bluedreaming/pseuds/poundingsound
Summary: Not every story is a romance, and not every romance ends in tragedy.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [doivent](https://archiveofourown.org/users/doivent/gifts).



>   
>    
> 

 

_Not every story is a romance, and not every romance ends in tragedy._

 

 

 

 

It’s midwinter, the air sharp with frost and the promise of snow. Taekwoon picks around the slushy spots on the sidewalk that have frozen into slick pools of ice. The black iron of the churchyard fence punctuates his path, standing out, a dark contract to the undisturbed snow that lies in drifts around the headstones. Mostly undisturbed, that is; there’s a blot in the folds of white, the scent of freshly turned earth.

For some reason, the newly dug grave reminds him about something he read once, people on the frontier who couldn’t bury their dead until the spring thaw, keeping them tucked away, frozen in a shed or some other building until the ground was soft enough to bite into with a shovel.

_Like finally laying a secret to rest,_ he thinks, and it’s for that reason as much as any other that when he comes to the gate of the churchyard, instead of continuing on his way, he presses a gloved hand to the iron bars and pushes.

Footsteps tracing a staccato path over the unmarked snow, Taekwoon makes his way to the edge of the grave, crouching down to lean over and peer into the shadows. The air rising from the beneath the ground is chill and his breath hangs in a fog in front of his face. When he whispers the words, the wind carries the sounds away

Straightening, Taekwoon hears the dull honking of a wild goose, completely out of place, wings flapping in a lone trajectory across the sky.

 

 

 

 

The signs are all there, so when he finally puts it all together, Jaehwan can’t believe he didn’t see it. Staring at the cursor as it blinks on the screen, black against a blank page, he thinks about things that hide in plain sight.

After all, there’s nothing strange about smiling at the neighbour, right? Only, he’s pretty sure that things haven’t just stopped at smiling, not for a long time at any rate.

"I’m going out for lunch with a friend," Heeyeon calls from the hallway, and he doesn’t have to see her face to hear the smile in her voice. There’s the sound of a key scraping in the lock, and then quiet.

Jaehwan presses the down key, and makes more corrections to the story of someone else’s affair. Things are simpler on paper.

 

 

 

 

"Sometimes I hate that I love you," the woman on the television screen shouts in the man’s face. The sound echoes around the living room of their apartment, Taekwoon tucked onto the sofa with a blanket and a cup of coffee.

"I’ll be right back," Fei had said, glancing down at the display on her phone before walking into their bedroom, the door swinging shut behind her. The cup of coffee in his hands is cold now, and through the bedroom door, he can hear the sound of his wife, laughing.

"Do you hate loving me, or do you love hating me?" the man on the screen shoves back in the woman’s face. Neither one makes sense. It's not that he hates Fei, and it's not that he doesn't love her either. When he stretches his leg out, along the sofa where she used to sit, the air outside the blanket is cold and he pulls it back, tucking himself in.

 

 

 

 

Jaehwan rubs his knuckles over his eyes, the knobs of bone almost sharp against the skin. He needs to sleep, but he also needs to not think, and the convoluted passages in the manuscript are a convenient self-justification. The words are swimming around on the screen by now though. With a sigh, he saves his work and grabs the keys from the dish in the hallway as he steps out the door.

A few hours after midnight even the walls are hushed, carpet sighing beneath his feet as he makes his way to the elevator. A flash of motion in his peripheral vision catches his eye and he turns to find his reflection framed in a small gilt mirror, eyes wide and startled. The skin beneath them is soft, puffy when he lifts the tip of a finger to touch.

The frame delineates the picture: there is no before or after, no commitment or infidelity. There is only Jaehwan, here in this moment. _What are you thinking?_ he doesn’t ask the face in the glass. When he steps into the elevator, the soft chime announcing each floor as they descend, he avoids his reflection in the walls of the small enclosure.

 

 

 

 

Taekwoon sits in the middle of the back row of the cinema, chin perched on one knee. On the screen, the end credits roll, white words crisp against the black backdrop. The room is mostly empty; most people don’t stick around for this part unless they know there are Easter eggs, but this is Taekwoon’s favourite part. All the people who worked together for weeks, months, maybe even years, all to put together perhaps two hours of final film footage. It seems ridiculous.

It’s perfect.

Only when the final words have scrolled up across the screen, only when the lights in the room have been turned on, does he unfold himself from the seat, slipping his arms through the sleeves of his coat.

When he steps outside the front doors of the cinema, it’s snowing, white flakes drifting down to land, scattered, across his shoulders and hair. Instead of turning down along the sidewalk towards the apartment, he steps into the little coffee shop on the corner instead. It’s warm, and dry, and smells like comfort: a mixture of coffee and the eccentric book collection that lines the walls. Taekwoon gets a coffee and sits down with _The Price of Salt_.

 

 

 

 

The coffee shop on the corner is warm, the hushed yellow lighting drawing the room into the place of private quiet that Jaehwan has always found so soothing, but there’s a restless itch in his side, a twitch in his fingers that keep skimming through the pages of books instead of settling down to read. Finally he gives up, swallowing the dregs of the coffee in a bitter gulp and tucking the book back on the shelf. He can’t even remember what it was called.

The bell over the door of the coffee shop rings as he steps out, feet crunching over the thin layer of snow that has already fallen since he left the apartment, and it takes until he’s halfway up the sidewalk for him to notice the person walking a few steps behind him.

Jaehwan peers at him from out of the corner of his eye. He doesn’t look dangerous, but appearances can be deceiving.

From the outside, it might look like Jaehwan is still loved by his wife.

 

 

 

 

There’s something familiar about the man who comes into the coffee shop with tired eyes and an oddly stretched expression, like he can’t stop thinking about something he knows he shouldn’t be thinking about, but it’s only when Taekwoon steps back out into the cold, only to follow the man back to his apartment, that he realizes they must be neighbours.

When the man presses the button for his floor, and then inclines his head, Taekwoon just nods. It’s the same floor. The man doesn’t stare at him outright, but the whites of his eyes catch in the reflective walls of the elevator.

Key in the lock of his front door, Taekwoon glances over to the neighbouring apartment, where the man is standing in front of his own door. Their eyes meet, before keys turn in locks and two doors open to dark apartments.

Hours later, the kitchen still rings with the memory of Fei’s laughter.

There’s a moment, at the end of a film, the _fin_ just fading on the screen, where the viewer needs to decide if they’re leaving now that the story is over or if they’re staying for the credits.

There’s never only one story.

Taekwoon turns, and steps back out of his apartment in time to catch the edge of the neighbouring front door before it clicks shut.

 

 

 

 

It might have happened like this: two strangers, catching a taxi back from the airport, accidentally stumble upon the fact that they are neighbours. Amusement leads to familiarity, the brush of skin as two people pass in the hallway, a burning glance as the elevator doors close. Perhaps one of them stumbled, perhaps the other caught her around the waist, perhaps their mouths met by accidental or perhaps it was completely intentional, a straightforward, "I like you."

In the end, it doesn’t matter. Whisper the secret to the bare earth, not at midnight but in the middle of the day with the sun shining bright on the snow. When the soil has filled the tear in the ground once more, the secret will take root, bringing forth something new.

 

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> To the recipient: I've been enjoying a lot of film essays lately, and so I tried to approach writing this like I would try to express a collection of scenes, rather than a strictly textual narrative. Just like actors express emotions and outcomes with the smallest of gestures or the lack thereof, I tried to leave a lot up to the viewer, or in this case the reader, while still ending up with a cohesive story. Did I succeed? I'm curious.


End file.
